January 15, 2016 UPDATE
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Newsroom, 15.01.2016, 22:00
Nicolae Timofti, president of the Republic of Moldova, an ex-soviet country with a Romanian-speaking majority on Friday designated the new candidate of the Parliament majority, Pavel Filip for the position of Prime Minister, Radio Chisinau reports. Pavel Filip is to be starting negotiations with Parliament parties on Monday. The president said that he accepted the majority’s new candidate after the situation changed on Thursday night when many signatories of the majority’s statement endorsing a candidate had announced they would cease their support if the Democratic Party insisted on the candidacy of controversial businessman Vlad Plahotniuc. On Friday, the declared Parliament majority of 55 MPs out of the Legislature’s 101 presented president Timofti with the candidacy of incumbent IT&C Minister Pavel Filip for the position of Prime Minister. Earlier in the day, Ion Paduraru, designated on Thursday by president Timofti, had announced his withdrawal. Unless a new government gets the swearing in vote by January 29th, the Republic of Moldova will be seeing early election.
Romanian president Klaus Iohannis has sent the law on changing the status of local political leaders to Parliament for reassessing. The president said that in its present form the law could affect the fight against corruption and the effectiveness of legislation in terms of integrity. Under the present law, mayors, local and county councilors as well as county council chairmen can lose their mandates only after they have been given prison sentences. The president believes that it’s the condemnation itself that should make a dignitary loses his or her integrity and not the punishment given by the court. The law was rejected by the Chamber of Deputies but endorsed by the Senate as a decision-making body.
A host of literary events, exhibitions and music shows have been held in Bucharest and other big cities across Romania and abroad, to mark National Culture Day. The Romanian Academy hosted a solemn session, and the Romanian Athenaeum played venue for a traditional music concert given by folk singer Grigore Lese and friends. Homage paying events have been held in Chisinau, the capital city of the Republic of Moldova, a country with a predominantly Romanian speaking population, where National Culture Day is also celebrated today, as well as in the Cernauti region in Ukraine, which is home to over 200,000 ethnic Romanians.
Romania’s economy registered a 3.7% growth rate in the first nine months of 2015, as compared to the same period of 2014, data released by the National Institute for Statistics show. Also, in real terms, the GDP registered in the third quarter of 2015 was 1.4% higher than in the second quarter of the same year. The National Forecast Commission has revised upward, to 3.6%, the estimated increase in the GDP in 2015 and maintained to 4.1% the estimated economic growth rate in 2016, according to the autumn version of the Long-Term Forecast, made public in November.
